The paper entitled, "Assortative Mating: Encounter-Network Topology and the Evolution of Attractiveness" by S. Dipple, T. Jia, T. Caraco, G. Korniss, and B.K. Szymanski has been published in Scientific Reports 7:45107, 2017.

March 29, 2017

The paper entitled, "Assortative Mating: Encounter-Network Topology and the Evolution of Attractiveness" by S. Dipple, T. Jia, T. Caraco, G. Korniss, and B.K. Szymanski has been published in Scientific Reports 7:45107, 2017. The authors model a social-encounter network where linked nodes match for reproduction in a manner depending probabilistically on each node’s attractiveness. The model reveals that increasing either the network’s mean degree or the “choosiness” exercised during pair formation increases the strength of positive assortative mating, making attractiveness correlated among mated nodes. By iterating over the model’s mapping of parents onto offspring across generations, we study the evolution of attractiveness. Selection mediated by exclusion from reproduction increases mean attractiveness, but is rapidly balanced by skew in the offspring distribution of highly attractive mated pairs.